Andy Slack's gaming blog

Arion: Self Defence

Late February. It’s 3 AM, and for some reason Our Heroes find themselves in the Low Income Residential area, queuing up at a cash machine. The Law Level is 1 and there are three PEFs on the board.

A few paces behind them are three even less savoury individuals than themselves, who produce weapons and demand money with menaces…

ENCOUNTER

Setup

Turn 1

Arion and the crew aren’t going to hand over their valuables meekly, although as you will see later on, this might have been the best response. Mind you, what kind of a game would that be, eh?

I did think of having Arion charge into melee, but then I looked at his chances and didn’t fancy them much.

We go to an In Sight test, and then shots are exchanged. The boss ganger (#7 on the table), going on 4, fires twice at Arion, and misses. Then, all hell breaks loose as everyone on 3 goes at the same time. Arion hits two gangers (#7 and #8) in the location of his choice, and because he doesn’t want to face a murder rap, he shoots them both in the leg, triggering Knocked Down results. Rolling for Recover from KD, #7 goes Out Of the Fight right away, and #8… fails completely and is now Obviously Dead. Oops.

Meanwhile (we’re still in the simultaneous part) #8 shoots Arion twice in the arm, so he gets two KDs to deal with. As he is wearing armour, which reduces incoming Impact by one point, and the Machine Pistol being fired at him only has one Impact, it can only Stun him. He falls prone.

Coriander unlimbers her assault rifle and shoots #5, getting a Bleeder result. He is Stunned this turn.

Finally, Dmitri… misses.

Turn 2

I still don’t understand why some shots are blurry and some aren’t. This one is, and Arion hasn’t even been shot in the head, which amusingly usually happens just before a blurred picture. Anyway…

Arion spends this turn standing up, ganger #5 spends it controlling his bleeding, and Coriander and Dmitri spend it sighting in on him. What will the ganger do next? I decide to use the Pep challenge which is part of the Robbery encounter. Dmitri passes 2d6, the ganger 3, so he runs for it on his next activation.

You can see the PEFs moving about and reproducing by fission in their normal endearing manner, but as yet none of their antics are important.

Turn 3

The ganger fast moves towards the nearest way off the board. Our crew saunter out at a normal pace, and head in the opposite direction – this gives them LOS on two PEFs, both of which resolve as LWC (Law-abiding Working Class). As per the rules, they immediately call the police, and I decide to hang around and go quietly, to avoid adding Resisting Arrest to our rap sheet. Besides, I want to experiment with the legal side of the rules.

AFTERMATH

A successful encounter, so we get +5 Fame and roll for improvement – Coriander goes up to Rep 5 as a result.

I decide to pass on the voluntary encounter for March, and we stay home – this lets me get straight to the trial, which is an involuntary encounter. But more of that next time.

CREDITS

Battlemat: Wydraz. Figures: eM4.

LESSONS LEARNED

I shouldn’t do this when I’m so tired. It took me over an hour to run those three turns.

As I was taught years ago in real life, don’t point a gun at something you don’t want to kill. Even choosing the most humane target location possible, Arion managed to kill one of the gangers.

Being Rep 6 is awesome. Facing someone who is Rep 6 is very, very scary. In particular, if I understand the rules correctly, Rep 6 characters ALWAYS activate.